Polymer-based biomedical microdevices for CTC diagnosis and keloid therapy

Abstract

To complement the traditional silicon and glass-based microfluidic devices, polymer-based microdevices have attracted much more attention in recent years. Advantages of low cost, excellent mechanical property, low demands of facilities and reagents have further facilitated the development of polymer-based microdevices. Simultaneously, novel microfabrication techniques being developed enable the integration of microfluidic chips to achieve multiple analyses on the same chip, especially in the research fields of medical diagnostic assays and clinical therapy. Cancer is a critical disease with high lethal rate nowadays. Diagnostics and therapeutics of cancer are important subjects, and any relevant creativity may change human lives in future. Polymer-based microfluidic microdevices have been extensively used for cancer relevant clinical applications. In this thesis, a variety of dual-functional polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based chips were developed to achieve both CTC capture and elution, for cancer diagnosis. For therapeutic application, a variety of polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) based microneedle patches encapsulating drugs was designed and fabricated to achieve transdermal drug delivery.